


Opportunity

by delicatelyglitterywriter



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, But aren't we all, DWFicExchange, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Mild Angst, Rescue Missions, jade is a little bit in love with 13 and yaz, overload of italics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 12:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicatelyglitterywriter/pseuds/delicatelyglitterywriter
Summary: 3 months had massed since the giant spider incident and Jade admittedly misses it, and them, all. That all changes one Friday night when someone breaks into the lab.





	Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RipleyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RipleyD/gifts).



> Based on this comic: https://twitter.com/MaryneeLahaye/status/1096467503310663680
> 
> RipleyD, I know it's perhaps not as gay as you wanted, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless :)

It had been three months since the ordeal with the giant spiders. Following the incident, Jade McIntyre had promptly shut down all programs involving expanding the life spans of spiders (and all similar programs), and made extra sure that all spider corpses were _actually_ corpses, and not just mostly-dead spiders.

She’d gotten away with it, too. Nobody had questioned her insistence to shut down the programs, all agreeing that it had had a weird impact on the ecosystem. For that, Jade was grateful. 

However, sometimes, when she let herself stop and reflect, she found herself missing the giant spiders. Well, not the spiders themselves, but the people it had brought her into contact with - the kindly old man, Graham, his wonderfully enthusiastic grandson, Ryan, their incredibly beautiful friend, Yasmin, and the eccentric and brilliant woman who called herself the Doctor. 

They were the first people in a very long time she’d fit in with almost instantly. 

Her workplace, filled with many different degrees, had a tendency to breed attitudes of elitism and exclusivity, with impossibly high standards of who a person who was meant to be. Jade couldn’t fit the mould if she tried, so she didn’t. Granted, it made her really lonely, particularly after experiencing what could have been, but she refused to exhaust herself trying to fit in with people who would never like her for who she was.

For this reason, she had volunteered to stay behind and lock up on a Friday night, when the others decided to all go to some trivia night. They’d left a while ago, calling out empty ‘thank you’s’ over their shoulders as they departed. Jade didn’t lock up right away, opting to finish off some work, so she didn’t have to worry about it over the weekend.

She finished up, and grabbed her bag, and coat, and the key she was supposed to use to lock the doors to the labs, and then drop off at reception. She locked the door to the lab she exited, quickly checked the doors to the other labs, and proceeded down the hallway towards reception. As she walked, she allowed thoughts of the Doctor and her friends to filter through her head again. She sighed to herself as she felt a deep and familiar sadness settle in her chest. She was definitely binging _Brooklyn Nine Nine_ while eating ice cream straight from the container when she got home. Numbing the sadness with humour and sugar wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, but it worked, so she took it.

At the end of the hall, she flicked the lights off, stopping in her tracks as she saw a light on back down the other end of the hallway, from the lab she’d come from. The light was on, and the door ajar. Jade probably wouldn’t have paid much attention if it was just a light, simply going back to turn it off, but she was _certain_ she had closed and locked the door. How could it be open again? All her coworkers were gone. Unless it was the janitor? No, no, she’d been in there, cleaning around Jade as she’d finished up her work. Then who? Or _what_?

Jade licked her lips, and crept back down the hall, towards the lab. Her heart sped up a little, wondering if she were about to catch a band of thieves. If she was, she probably should just call the police, in case they were dangerous. But what if it was someone who came in peace? She didn’t want to call the police on an innocent person. 

_Don’t be ridiculous, Jade,_ she scolded herself. _What kind of person who comes in peace breaks into scientific facility, containing several decades worth of information?_

She knew she should _really_ just call the police and let them deal with the intruders. It would be dangerous and foolish to go in there all by herself, and would probably get hurt in trying to intervene. But she couldn’t help it; she had to know for herself who was in there. Swallowing the terror blossoming in her chest, she pushed the door open with her fingers and peered in. She couldn’t believe what she saw.

It was the Doctor, Yasmin, Ryan, and Graham, all going through the cupboards and drawers, evidently looking for something. 

For a minute, Jade couldn’t believe her eyes. How could they be here? _Why_ were they here? The disbelief morphed to a feeling of euphoria - _they’re actually here!!_ \- which then turned into confusion, mixed in with some disappointment at their casual breaking of the law, and just a dash of anger that they didn’t just _call_ her to get whatever they needed.

She pushed the door open the rest of the way, stepped inside, and planted her hands on her hips.

“What they hell do you think you’re doing?”

Four hears whipped towards her, caught off guard. Three out of the four of them had the grace to look guilty, but the Doctor simply broke into a wide grin.

“Jade McIntrye! Well, I’ll be! Didn’t think you’d be here! Friday night and all. How are you?”

“By the looks of it, you didn’t expect _anyone_ to be here,” Jade said in reprimand, raising her eyebrows. The Doctor’s happy smile wavered, morphing into a sheepish grin. “What exactly are you looking for? And why did you have to _break into_ my workplace to get it?”

“We’re, well, _I’m_ trying to build a special kind of battery, and this facility was the most likely to have the chemicals I need to finish it,” the Doctor explained. “And, in my experience, you scientists aren’t super keen on sharing your chemicals, so I skipped straight to the part where I take what I need.”

“We don’t share because many of them are dangerous,” Jade deadpanned. “But we know each other. You could have simply called me.”

“You’d have helped us?” the Doctor asked, her eyes lighting up. 

“Yeah,” Jade said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, when you watch someone stop giant spiders from rampaging Sheffield, you don’t exactly hate them.”

The Doctor looked conflicted between smiling and frowning. “How long’s it been since the spiders?”

“It’s only been 3 months,” Jade said, frowning. Had they forgotten that quickly? The thought stung a little. Or, quite a lot, actually. The Doctor gave her an apologetic look.

“Sorry, our lives are...unusual. Really busy, and wild, and complicated. It’s hard to keep track of how much time has passed on Earth between our little adventures.”

 _On Earth?_ What did _that_ mean?

“Hey, maybe you’d like to come on our next adventure!” the Doctor proposed. “I think you’ll really love it. And it does seem only fair, since we broke into your workplace and everything.”

Jade knew she probably shouldn’t. But she couldn’t help it; she’d not seen them in months, and she missed them, and she _was_ curious as to what the Doctor meant by adventure. 

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Probably.”

“Will it get me into trouble?”

“If you can’t cover our tracks for taking the chemicals, yes.”

“Will it be fun?”

The Doctor flashed her a toothy grin. “Oh, yes.”

Jade caved, mirroring the Doctor’s grin. “I’m in.”

* * *

“Where are you taking the chemicals?” Jade wondered as she followed the Doctor, Yasmin, Ryan, and Graham down the street. 

“To my ship,” the Doctor answered cheerily, being incredibly careful with the large box of chemicals she was carrying.

“You sure you don’t need help with that?” Ryan asked.

“No, thanks, Ryan, I’ve got it.”

“Your _ship_?” Jade asked incredulously. They were nowhere near water, and casual space travel didn’t exist yet. 

“Yep!” the Doctor answered cheerily. “It’s a space-time ship!”

Jade pulled her lips to one side, not saying anything more. The woman was brilliant, but she was talking nonsense, and Jade couldn’t decide what to think. Was she not as brilliant as Jade had thought? Or was it a metaphor or something, making the Doctor even more endearing than she had previously been? 

After a little walk, they stopped at a blue police box, like the ones from movies in the 1960s and some from the 70s. What were they doing at the police box? 

“Key, right hip pocket,” the Doctor said, and Yasmin pulled the key out, unlocking the box.

“Wait, are you all going in there?” Jade asked. The Doctor grinned at her.

“Yep.”

“But there’s no way all five of us can fit inside!”

“‘Course we can!” Ryan said with a twinkle in his eye.

“But _how_?”

“Take a look,” Graham said, stepping inside after the Doctor, Ryan, and Yasmin. Jade hesitated. She couldn’t possibly fit in there, not with four other people inside. And what was the purpose of going in there, anyway? It wasn’t going to take them anywhere. Unless the Doctor had her experiment set up inside? But that brought it back to the issue of size: there would be no way to could possibly fit. 

When nobody came back out, Jade gave in and stepped inside, just to see why they had gone inside. She gasped as she saw the inside of the box. It was filled with a soft orange light, illuminating off a series of walls made up of hexagonal patterns, rising as high as the eye could see. Further up was a platform with a 360-degree console, with a crystal in the middle. Yasmin, Ryan, and Graham hung around on the edge of the platform, while the Doctor danced around the console, fiddling with various elements. Jade was vaguely aware her mouth was hanging open as she took it all in. 

It shouldn’t be possible. It _couldn’t_ be possible. 

She ran back outside, looking at the exterior of the box. It was the same size as it had been when she had first seen it. She walked around it. No tricks, no illusions. Just a regular box, that was somehow _massive_ on the inside. 

_But how?_

She stepped back inside, struggling to accept the reality she saw in front of her. She couldn’t help it; she had to verbalise what she was thinking.

“But...but...but it’s _bigger_ on the _inside_!”

The Doctor stopped her work at the console and grinned at her.

“Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“But _how_?” 

“You ever read Harry Potter?” Jade nodded. “It’s like the extending charm - making things bigger inside; the tents, bags, and so on, so you don’t have to bring massive things along with you. Except with my box, it’s science, not magic.”

“Science?” Jade asked in disbelief. “Just what kind of science is this?”

“It’s called dimensional engineering,” the Doctor said, waving her hand dismissively. “Humans don’t even think about exploring dimensional engineering for another couple thousand years, so don’t worry about trying to understand.”

It all suddenly made sense for Jade.

“Wait, wait, wait, are you saying that this is a _spaceship_?” 

“And a time machine!” 

The Doctor grinned at her, resuming her work at the console. Jade vaguely registered the doors closing behind her. 

“You might want to hold onto something!” Yasmin shouted at her as the engines started up with a wheezing sound. Jade reacted instinctively, curling her fingers around a bar making up part of the pattern of the wall, just in time to keep herself from falling flat on her back as the ship tumbled around as it took off.

She wondered where they were going, or _if_ they were going; she still didn’t quite believe it all. 

* * *

The ship landed with a thud, making Jade stumble, but she caught herself in time. She felt a bit lightheaded after the flight. She’d never done well on wild and bumpy rides, such as rollercoasters, or people who sped, and this was the worst she’d experienced yet. She took a deep breath, willing herself to not throw up. 

“You alright there, Jade?” Yasmin asked, her voice right next to Jade’s ear. Jade jumped.

_Where did she come from?_

“Yeah, I’m,” Jade swallowed, “I’m fine. Just don’t like rollercoaster-y and bumpy rides. Doesn’t agree with my stomach.”

She turned her head to Yasmin, who was wearing a sympathetic look. “Is there anything you do to make it better? Because we still do have to get you back home after you’ve helped us.”

Jade’s heart sunk to the pit of her stomach. She had to endure that _again_? Why did she agree to come along again?

“Uh, sometimes I drink water with anti-nausea pills,” she said. Yasmin called out to Ryan, who promptly delivered the requested items. She swallowed the pills, and allowed herself a few more sips of water before she exhaled slowly. 

“Better?”

Jade reflexively nodded. In truth, the pills took a little bit to kick in, and water alone didn’t really help, but she didn’t want to worry them. She could fight it, or, if not, at least find a private place to give in. Yasmin patted her shoulder. They both turned as the Doctor came bounding up to them, holding space suits. She herself was already wearing hers. Yasmin took one and immediately started putting it on. Jade just stared.

“What is this?”

“It’s a spacesuit!” the Doctor said enthusiastically. “You’re going to need it when we leave the TARDIS. You can’t breathe the air out there.”

“Where is _there_ exactly?”

The Doctor grinned at her. “It’s a surprise! Don’t worry, it’s a safe one, so long as you wear your spacesuit properly!”

The Doctor turned to Yasmin, to help her where she got stuck. Jade sighed, shrugged, and stepped into her spacesuit, easily figuring out how to get it on. Soon enough, all of them had their suits and helmets on. The Doctor thrust a box of things into Jade’s arms wordlessly, and then led everyone out of the box, to wherever it was she had taken them,

Jade gasped as she stepped out, stopping in her tracks to take in the endless red landscape around her. 

“But...this is _Mars_!” she breathed out. The Doctor cast a glance over her shoulder, wearing that same, enthusiastic grin.

_Does she ever stop smiling?_

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“But _how_ can we be on _Mars_?” Jade asked, waddling quickly to catch up with the Doctor. 

“Told you, my TARDIS - that’s the box that’s bigger inside - is a space-time ship! It can take me, well, _us_ , literally anywhere in time and space.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere,” the Doctor confirmed with a nod.

“To Queen Victoria’s coronation?” 

“Oh, yes.”

“Into the future?”

“Yep. Easy peasy.”

“To meet Rosa Parks?”

“We actually did that recently. Lovely woman. I think you’d like her.”

Jade walked in silence, trying to comprehend it all. The Doctor had a box that was somehow bigger on the inside, could travel anywhere on time and space, and now she had brought Jade to _Mars_. It was a lot to take in. Her brain scrambled for explanations. She couldn’t be a regular human from 2019; nobody had technology like that, not even Russia or North Korea. Was she from the future?

_Is she even from Earth?_

“Are you an alien?” Jade blurted out before she could stop herself. She blushed furiously when she caught her mistake. “I mean, uh, you just don’t seem like someone from 2019, and-”

“Relax, Jade,” the Doctor laughed. “It’s not an offensive question. Yes, I’m an alien, and a time traveller. That’s why I have things and can do things that humans can’t, in 2019, anyway.”

“But then where are you _from_?” Jade asked, wincing even as the words left her mouth. She'd been on the receiving end of the question plenty of times herself, and though she knew the context and implications of the question were different, she still couldn't help but feel kind of guilty asking it. Her guilt deepened when the Doctor took a long while to respond. So long that Jade began to backtrack.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“No, it’s okay,” the Doctor cut in, although her voice no longer held the mirth Jade was used to hearing from her. “You’re curious. Totally natural. I just get sad thinking about my home, is all. I come from a planet called Gallifrey. My species is technically Gallifreyan, but we’re - well, we were - better known to everyone as the Time Lords. We were famous for having extensive knowledge about time and its workings.”

Jade didn’t miss the way the Doctor’s voice wavered when she used past tense. 

“What…” Jade hesitated. “What happened to Gallifrey?”

“There was a war,” the Doctor said shortly. “A really big war. I had to put it in a special kind of parallel universe called a pocket universe to protect it, but it means I can never go home.”

Jade didn’t know what to say. What was someone _supposed_ to say to something like that? She thought as she walked alongside the Doctor. She thought for a long while, before finally coming up with something to say, which she thought would be comforting. 

“What did you like best about Gallifrey?”

Even though she couldn’t see the Doctor’s face, she could hear the Doctor’s smile. “I really liked the landscape. It was so beautiful. It was as red as the plain you see in front of you, but it had so much more life, Jade!”

As she spoke, she started to gesture. “In the Northest of the North, there was the main city. Grand thing it was. Brilliant architecture, with a giant building in the middle that doesn’t look unlike some of the olden churches you have back on earth. To the East of the city, there were rolling hills of red and green, which changed with each season, depending on where the grass grew. It looked different every time, just like how each sunset is unique.

“To the West of the city, there was endless desert, but it was still beautiful from a distance. To stand at the edge of the city, and just stare out at the sand, it was gorgeous. Sometimes, if you looked at it at just the right time, it was almost as if the sand sparkled, like if it had glitter in it. I never did find out why that happened. And to the South of the city, there was the forest. The forest was incredible!

“When the twin suns were rising or setting, the light would shine on the silver leaves of the trees, and it made it look like the entire forest was on fire. It was absolutely spectacular. As a kid, I used to like to wander through the forest when it happened, and pretend I was walking through fire. It was brilliant.”

“That sounds like a place from a fairytale,” she mused after the Doctor was done. The Doctor chuckled.

“Where do you think you get your fairytale descriptions from?”

Jade laughed at that. There was no way humans could have known about the existence of Gallifrey, let alone what it looked like. Before she could point this out however, she spotted a rock, and watched as the Doctor’s right foot landed in a place that would trip her up when she took her next step.

“Doctor, watch out!” Jade called, but just a second too late. The Doctor yelled as she fell, tumbling over the hill they had been climbing. Jade could do nothing but watch as the Doctor tumbled down the slope, landing at the bottom, on her back. Through the mic system that allowed them to talk, she heard the Doctor groan.

“Doc, you okay?” Graham asked. 

“Watch out for the rocks, fam,” she said weakly. Yasmin was the first one over, climbing hastily down the slope to the Doctor. 

“Careful, Yasmin,” Jade warned. One person hurt was bad enough; she didn’t want anyone else getting hurt.

“Yaz,” Yasmin said.

“Hmm?”

“Call me Yaz. It’s what all my friends call me.”

“We’re friends?”

Yaz laughed. “Well, given that we took on some giant spiders and just travelled through space together, yeah, I’d say we’re friends.”

Jade couldn’t stop her stomach from flip flopping - but for a reason completely unrelated to bumpy rides - or grinning as widely as the Doctor often did. “Okay, Yaz. Is the Doctor okay?”

“Just taking a nap!” the Doctor replied cheerfully, abruptly sitting up. “All better!”

“You just tumbled down a rocky slope, I don’t think you’re fine.”

“Alien, remember?” the Doctor said, turning her head to Jade. “I have self-healing powers.”

“We all have self-healing powers, you’re not special,” Jade quipped drily before she could stop herself. The Doctor laughed. 

“Touche. I mean my alien biology means I heal faster than you. So I’m right as rain. Come on down, Jade, Ryan, Graham, we’ve arrived.”

“Arrived where?” Ryan asked, letting Graham help him make his way down the slope.

“Like I said to Jade: surprise!”

They all reached the bottom, where the Doctor was waiting to lead them past a boulder. Behind the boulder sat a rover, looking a little worse for wear, although not so bad that it was breaking down. It looked like it had been there for only a couple of months, 18 months at most. To Jade, it looked very familiar. She went up to it, to inspect, and jerked back when she realised which rover it was.

“Wait, is this Mars Rover Opportunity?”

The Doctor grinned at her. “Yep.”

“But she died months ago! What are we doing here?”

The Doctor knelt down beside Opportunity, using her buzzing device to loosen some screws. “Reviving her.”

“But how?”

“Everything I need is in the boxes I gave you and Yaz. Jade, in your box there should be a red wire and a brown wire. Could you pass those, please?”

Jade passed the requested wires.

“Yaz, battery.”

Yaz carefully passed the battery to the Doctor.

“But don’t rovers operate on solar power?”

“Yes, but this battery is more an enhanced power storage unit and back-up power source, as well as a couple of other mechanisms mixed in, than a battery in the way that you understand the term.”

“But how did you manage to put it together?” Jade asked, the questions coming rapidly. “I mean, I’ve been with you since we left the lab and I didn’t see you put it together.”

“It was already mostly done by the time we visited-”

“Broke into,” Yaz corrected, her tone light and teasing. The Doctor paused her work, making a face at Yaz.

“Fine, _broke into_ your lab for the chemicals. Then, I just added them to the battery and let the Battrifier wrap it all up, nice and snug, for me - putting the outer metal casing on it, so to speak - and I did all that while you were marvelling at the size of the TARDIS.”

“The _Battrifier_?”

“Don’t ask,” Ryan asked with a shake of his head. Jade tilted her head. There had to be a good story behind that. But she could ask later. 

The Doctor continued working, asking for various tools and items, and what felt like an eternity later, she resecured the panel she had removed in order to get inside of Opportunity. She stood up, dusted off her knees, and tapped at a spot near the top of the rover.

“Wakey, wakey.”

Opportunity blinked to life, and the Doctor smiled.

“Hey there.”

“It was dark,” Opportunity said, her voice coming out of speakers Jade didn’t even know the Rover had.

“I didn’t know she had speakers,” she whispered, leaning towards Yaz. Yaz shrugged.

“One of the things she wired up with the battery-pack-thing, I think.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said to Opportunity. “Your battery ran out. But I brought a new one that will last for ages, so don’t you worry.”

“I am awake?”

“Yeah, you are. And I’m here to take you home. What do you say?”

“I was left alone.”

The Doctor reached up and put a tender hand on her. “Yeah. The NASA team lost communication with you, and they did all they could, but they couldn’t find you. They tried, Oppy, they really did.”

“Am I going back to them?”

The Doctor cast a look over her shoulder, looking right at Jade.

“Actually, I had a better idea in mind.”

* * *

**_Several months later..._ **

“Oppy, what’s the weather looking like for tomorrow?” Jade asked from where she was sprawled out on her couch, happily doodling away in her sketchbook. “Thinking of going for a walk, but I don’t want to if it’s rainy.”

“12 degrees, easterly wind, rain between 3 and 4 o’clock,” Opportunity answered almost immediately. “If you were to go on a walk tomorrow morning, you could miss the rain.”

“Thanks.” Jade threw her a smile. Opportunity didn’t answer, not that Jade had expected her to. She was always busy these days entertaining herself on various internet forums, learning about the world and people, and picking up various slang, much to Jade’s amusement. She was perhaps the only person in the world who had the pleasure of hearing a robot shout “yeet” as it flung itself around the corner in pursuit of a ball. 

“Jade?” Opportunity asked after a few minutes of silence. 

“Mm?” Jade didn’t look up from her drawing.

“Mr Smith has just detected a massive energy surge about 3 blocks away from here,” Opportunity informed her. Jade’s pencil stilled and she looked up.

“Who’s Mr Smith?”

“Supercomputer,” Opportunity said in a tone that probably would have been a giggle if she were human. “Belonging to Sarah Jane Smith, former companion of the Doctor.”

Jade sat upright. “The Doctor? Does that mean the energy is alien?”

“Quite possibly.”

Jade grinned. Dumping her art materials on the couch beside her, she leapt up and grabbed her coat.

“Come on, then.”


End file.
